Embodiments of the present invention relate to the global sharing of and access to electronic resources, and in particular to sharing and accessing resources using a remote computing system.
Various techniques for sharing data between users are in use today. For example, users may copy data to a portable storage device (such as CD's, DVD's, USB keys, and the like) and provide the portable storage device to a recipient. The recipient may then copy the data from the portable storage device to a computing device associated with the recipient, and subsequently consume or attempt to consume the data.
Various techniques for sharing data using remote computing systems are also in use today. For example, Dropbox™ by Dropbox, Inc. of San Francisco, Calif. provides cloud storage by which users can copy data between computers having the Dropbox™ software installed and share data with others. To do so, a networked folder is provided on the user's computer, and any data that the user moves to that networked folder can be synchronized with remote servers. The user may then access the data on the remote servers from another device having the Dropbox™ software installed or share the data on the remote servers with others by sending a link to a website where the other individuals may download the data.
While the more recent provisions for sharing data between users via remote computing systems provide enhancements over traditional file sharing such as copying data to portable storage devices (such as CD's, DVD's, USB keys, and the like), all of these known techniques suffer from numerous deficiencies. For example, none of the techniques take into consideration the environment or context (e.g., the software and/or hardware configuration) of the recipient's computing device. As a result, when a user attempts to share data with the recipient, they have no way of knowing whether or not the recipient will be able to successfully consume that data. On the recipient's side, if the recipient is not able to consume the data as originally communicated from the sender, the recipient is then forced to pursue undesirable alternatives, such as installing different software, requesting the sender to convert the data, etc.